So I am ready to buy WiTopia to give me an extra layer of privacy while I am living on the road.

Based on someone else I was recently talking to, I guess WiTopia doesn't work exactly the way I thought, and so I wanted to get some clarification here.

It was my understanding, that if I use WiTopia, that it would "anonymize" me and my transactions online via an encrypted tunnel between my laptop and WiTopia's servers.

However, someone pointed out that is only the case for surfing the Internet, and may not apply to other things you'd do online (e.g. Email, FTP, Chatting, etc.)

So, of course, you guys don't work for WiTopia, but I am hoping you can help educate me and help me to get a better understanding of what WiTopia - or any "Personal VPN" - does and does not protect against.

For anonymous browsing use the Tor Browser Bundle https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en. For secure email use the Tor Browser and Hushmail https://www.hushmail.com/. Be sure to setup your hushmail account using the Tor Browser else it will not be secure. You can use Tor for chat, ftp and everything but torrents, you can read why it is not secure at the Tor site...also it slows everyone using Tor down. Oh, It is free and open sourced. Ahh, the Tor Browser disables Flash, because it is a security risk, but you can enable it if you want.